Valerie C. posted about her pet duck Spuck, who loves and misses her.
So I have a pet duck who is special needs. I saved Spuck from being culled as a duckling and he imprinted on me, but I go to college on the other side of the country. This was my duck’s reaction after seeing me for the first time in 4 months
That’s a good duck, Spuck. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
There are plenty of lighthouses left along the earth’s shores, although very few still have a lighthouse keeper. Some are automatic, but many are completely abandoned because of improved communication and navigation. Quite a few of these abandoned lighthouses have scary or even tragic stories in their history. For example, Flannan Island Lighthouse in Scotland saw tragedy only a year after it became operational. The lighthouse had no radio, and on December 15, 1900, there were no lights.
The lighthouse was manned by three people – James Ducat, Thomas Marshall and Donal Macarthur. A passing ship also reported that there was no light visible, and when it was investigated, the scene was an eerie one.
The table was set for dinner, a meal of meat and potatoes laid out for the men. The beds had clearly been slept in, and the only real clue of something that might have happened was a reference to a severe storm, made in the log for the day before. Another entry stated that the storm was passing, though, and there was no sign of damage to the Flannan Isles lighthouse. There was no sign of a struggle, no blood, and only a single chair had been knocked over. Everything else was eerily, strangely intact.
There were a number of theories about what happened, including the sudden arrival of pirates or the presence of vengeful ghosts from the nearby ruins. The theory given the most credibility is that the men were all killed when they were swept out to sea by fierce waves, but no trace of them has ever been found.
Other lighthouse stories include shipwrecks, murder, prisoners of war, plane crashes, suicide, natural disasters, ghosts, and men driven mad by loneliness. Read them all at Urban Ghosts.
(Image credit: Chris Downer / CC BY-SA 2.0)
Patrick Corr of Cork, Ireland, adopted a cat from The Cat Hospital three years ago. Stevie is a girl cat that was born blind. Corr is devoted to her, even though living with her meant having to make a few lifestyle changes. The title he gave to the video says it all: Love Your Cat. Read more about Corr here. -Thanks, Patrick!
NASA astronauts who live and work on the International Space Station get there and back by hitching rides with the Russians. You have to wonder what Kennedy and Khrushchev would think of that. On Thursday morning, cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova, and NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore (commander of Expedition 42) came home to Earth in a Soyuz spacecraft, floating down with the aid of an enormous parachute, to land in Kazakhstan. This picture of the golden parachute (which is actually red and white) was captured by NASA photographer Bill Ingalls. See more pictures from the successful landing at National Geographic. Get more technical details about the return at NASA.
(Image credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA)
Farmer Derek Klingenberg (previously at Neatorama) celebrate Pi Day in his own way -by arranging his cows into a cow pi! -via Mashable
All-around delightful geek Vi Hart, in explaining the irrelevance of Pi Day, ends up getting us more excited about it. There’s never a bad time to learn more about numbers. And today we have an excuse to eat pie! Personally, I believe the more holidays, the better. -via Metafilter
See also: Last year's anti-Pi Day rant. And more from Vi Hart.
Italian gymnast Sara Berardinelli takes to the uneven bars at L'International Gymnix competition last weekend in Montreal. Her coach Mauro di Rienzo is right there, with a trained eye and lightning-fast reflexes when she clips the bar. His catch may have saved her from breaking her neck! You can see the catch from a different angle here. Then she tried to finish her routine, but makes the same miscalculation again. And once again, di Rienzo is right there to save her from paralysis or worse. Gymnastics is scary, and he deserves a medal himself for his quick actions.
At the same time, I have to wonder if he knew she wasn’t ready for this event. In the qualifying round, she completed the routine just fine, but he was inches away while she was on the high bar in case anything went wrong. -via Uproxx
This guy in Russia caught a fish in a pond. He didn’t even get to get a good look at it before it was stolen away in the blink of an eye! Cats know that you have to reach out and strike when the opportunity arises. It was a small fish, but it will make a decent meal for a hungry cat. Ignoramusky thought you’d enjoy this video. -via Tastefully Offensive
Adam Woodworth built this little Star Wars Imperial speeder bike, complete with a Storm Trooper, camera, and quadcopter maneuverability!
I got into FPV (First Person Video) multi-rotor racing a few months ago. The fast, low level flying instantly reminded me of the Endor chase scene from Return of the Jedi. This project was an obvious choice to combine my interest and experience in RC (remote control) flight with my love of Star Wars stuff. I like always having some strange project on the work bench and this one was next in line, an attempt to build a version of the Imperial Speeder Bikes from the movie that I could “get into” and fly around myself.
Woodworth used a 1999 Hasbro speeder bike and designed a quadcopter that would lift it without looking too obviously like a helicopter. A Storm Trooper action figure was too heavy, so he made a more lightweight body and used the action figure’s armor and helmet only. The helmet can be quickly replaced by a camera when you want to record from the vehicle itself. Read about the project at Make, and watch this thing in action below.
-via Geeks Are Sexy
BrotherTrousers mashed up “Still in Love With You” by Electro Velvet with the British Potato Waffles jingle and it’s just right. Not that I would ever eat frozen potato waffles, but I might sing about them. And good luck to Electro Velvet in the 2015 Eurovision contest! -via b3ta
This hockey game has been customized the fit the players and conditions. The goal is a dachshund-sizes hole in the snow, and the players are one man against his two dogs. Ernie is an enthusiastic, if not particularly skilled goalie. He retrieves just fine. Max arrives and shows him how to block -both the camera and the ball! A good time was had by all. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
Armando Ferreira described this video he posted as “an Apple engineer explains how they developed the new 2015 Macbook and the day Tim Cook saw it for the first time.” Since it’s in Spanish, you’ll have to rely on the brilliant subtitles.
If you understand Spanish, you will probably have to watch twice, to keep the subtitles and the actual story straight. If you can neither read English nor understand spoken Spanish, you will still laugh because everyone else does.
This concerns me a bit. I need to figure out which laptop to send my kid to college with. It should have the features she needs without going overboard. In other words, what other students are using. Any suggestions? -via Viral Viral Videos
The city of Los Angeles grew tremendously between its incorporation in 1850 and the turn of the 20th century (and ever since). There was never enough fresh water for the growing city, so William Mulholland designed aqueducts and several dams to supply L.A. This included the St. Francis Dam, which held over 12 billion gallons of water. The massive construction was completed in 1926. And it came in under budget.
It was three minutes before the stroke of midnight on a windy March 12, 1928, when the St. Francis Dam broke. Many of the sleepy residents of the San Francisquito Canyon mistook the shaking and rumbling for an earthquake, a common enough occurrence in Southern California. Within moments, the canyon was filled with 12.6 billion gallons of water, which had been intended for the sinks, bathtubs, and residents of Los Angeles 47 miles away. The water instead roared through the canyon, valley, and the small towns that populated the region, smashing everything in its path.
No one who saw the dam break lived to tell about it. The water swept away several towns on its path to the ocean 55 miles away. It is believed that over 600 people were killed in the disaster. And just about everyone blamed one man: William Mulholland. Smithsonian tells the story of the dam, the disaster, and the investigation into what went wrong at the St. Francis Dam.
I went to see Chappie yesterday. It was exactly what I expected: Robocop meets Short Circuit with the feel of District 9. I quite enjoyed it. Chappie is such a likable robot, it inspired our friends at Geeks Are Sexy to revisit some of the great robot “good guys” from older films. There are those you know and love, and some you may not have thought about in a while- all with video clips so you can enjoy them again.
Would you like to spend some time on a “choose your own adventure” story based on classic noir films?
The dame walks into your office without knocking, and boy, does she look uneasy.
She stares at you with piercing gray eyes and asks, “Are you Sam Stonemarrow, the private detective?”
All you need to do is click on the text response to advance the story, but sometimes you have a choice of two or more replies. At some points, either of the answers will take you to the same destination, but some will take you on ridiculous tangents. If you manage to stay on the straight and narrow storyline, you’ll find it’s a bit ridiculous, too. Because it’s from Clickhole. -via Metafilter
